Laughter
by Wingsong
Summary: They laughed at my sword. Fools. With one swift stroke I shut them up and made myself a killer. But there was one who did not laugh. (Kenshin POV) (My first Kenshin fic, so be kind please, and r&r)


Disclaimer: Are you kidding??? I would never have enough imagination to create something as wonderful as Kenshin!!!  
  
Warnings: Spoilers up through the first OVA (the Tokyo, Kyoto, and Memories arcs, for manga readers). You won't be able to understand this unless you know that.  
  
Laughter  
  
By Wingsong  
  
They laugh at my sword, and I smile in response.  
  
They laughed at my sword back then as well, but I did not smile at all. No, it was not the sword they laughed at then, for at that time my sword in the right hands would be a deadly weapon. No one laughed at a sword in those times. No one could to afford to.  
  
No, in that time they laughed at the whole picture. At the beginning, when my cheek was smooth and my eyes, while they would never again have the innocence of a child, were as innocent as they could be in those times, they laughed. Little more than a child myself, having come down one mountain in defiance of my master and yet to climb another to kill my love, with a sword that looked too big for my skinny arms and a face too serious for my age, they laughed at me. They laughed at me, but I ignored them. Too used to my master's comments to bother about the laughter of ignorant fools, their opinions didn't matter to me. I thought. Then they laughed at my silence. There, on the training ground, as they punched their wooden dummies, they laughed at me.  
  
I showed them. With one swift stroke I beheaded their dummies. They didn't laugh again. That one stroke was well timed, both for the jokers in the crowd and for a young man watching by the side of the field. One slash, across one wooden post, when I had done it so many times before; it did not seem so significant at the time. Looking back now, that one slash made me a killer.  
  
I had ended their laughter, yes. But I had ended mine forever.  
  
No one laughed at me then. They either knew who I was, or they didn't have time to grin. When I finally met someone who had the time, he didn't laugh. The first man to fight me at more than one pass. The first to wound me, but he never laughed. My eyes had grown too cold then. Anyone who looked at my whole picture then could not laugh. I disgusted them, made them afraid to even look at me. I told myself I didn't care. My coldness, my soul was ample payment for the future, for the children of the children who still played in the blood soaked streets of Kyoto.  
  
When I brought her to the inn, I did get some laughter, but it was always quickly stifled. The one man who would joke about it openly did so with fear in his eyes. She feared me too, but with a kind of blind resignation. She feared because she was supposed to fear, not because she had any care for her life. In her I sensed the hopeless disregard for her own life that echoed in me. It did not matter to me when I died, and I could see that it was the same for her. She intrigued me.  
  
Then came the season of peace, those few short months that I allowed myself to hope that life for me could be different, that the cycle of killing could be stopped. Even she noticed the change, noticed how much more at peace I was. I had never felt more pride in my life then when I saw those first seeds grow, had never felt worse when some died. We were away from Kyoto, away from the blood and the tears and the pain. I was almost...happy, with her.  
  
I knew it had to break. Everything in my life did. When I came down that mountain, with another wound on my cheek and an even darker one on my soul, I had reached a decision. No more. No more killing, no more pain, no more targets, no more bloody rain. That resolution lasted until he found me sitting next to her. He gave me a way out that would allow me to continue in his service but not as an assassin. I would have to kill. Again. But by the end of this madness I would have at least some people who could look me in the eye with something other than fear. I agreed. There was no choice, really. I had made too many enemies not to guarantee my side the victory. Only now did I truly understand my master. He had warned me a day like this would come. When I would finally see the monster that this style could make me.  
  
So I chose to become a killer once again. One condition. When my sword had done its dirty work for them, when the war was won, I would never pick up a sword again. He seemed to accept this, though others looked as if they thought I was crazy. One in particular I remember. Standing in a field outside Kyoto, with a pack on my back, he assured me that I was a fool. I had been a killer, he said, and nothing could ever change that. I had lived by the sword and would die by it. He tossed me a sword and told me to come back to him when that piece of scrap metal broke. If I could still profess the same idiotic ideals then, he would make me another.  
  
The words did not make much of an impression on me then, though I would remember them ten years later. The words had no meaning as the sword flew towards me, though that is not what caught my attention either. As I grabbed the sword from the air, his laughter echoed in my ears. It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard. After nearly five years I had laughter again. Laughter from a man who had no fear that I would harm him for his mirth. That was the most precious sound I had heard in many years. I felt my soul begin to heal.  
  
I wandered for ten years, searching for that feeling again. Every time someone's eyes sparked in mirth, every half concealed chuckle warmed my soul. I became addicted to that feeling. I found myself adopting mannerisms that would bring it out more often. Before I really knew what was happening, I had split my personality. The killer still lived, but was buried deep inside the wanderer, tightly controlled.   
  
Then I met her. She refused to see me as just a silly wanderer. She did not laugh at my sword. Amazement and uncertainty were in her eye, yes, but no mirth. I felt my iron control breaking. With every fight I got in to protect her, or the boy, or the gambler, or the doctor, it slipped a little more. Twice it broke completely. The first time, she was able to call me back to myself. The second, no one could call me back. They were all too young, and my opponent was just as lost as I. It was then that I knew something had to be done.  
  
So I climbed the mountain once again. I ended up on hands and knees in front of my master, but still he would not give me the tools to contain the beast. The argument must have gotten rather loud, because the door slammed open and in came, if not my best defenders, certainly the loudest. The boy, who had laughed and mocked and thrown my stolen purse back at my head. The girl, who had attempted to steal my sword even as she laughed. Neither of them would convince him. No, that unlikely chance belonged to the girl who stood behind them, the one who had never laughed. She did it. With unaccustomed meekness, she managed to turn the stubborn head of my master.  
  
I learned to control the beast and evil was defeated once again. There are those who still laugh at my sword, who find it and my vow ridiculous. The policeman, the former spymaster. Where before I would take that laughter into my soul as a balm, I found that it did not feel nearly as good as before.  
  
They laugh at my sword, and I smile in response.  
  
But I laugh with those who did not. 


End file.
